“Do You Want to Get Well?”

Who likes to go to the doctor?Raise your hand. Just as I
thought, I didn’t think I’d get a very good show of hands.

Still, we all know, whether we like it or not, that good medical
care along with eating wisely and daily exercise, are all necessities for
maintaining good health. We know this,
but still it can be hard to do. Perhaps
you heard about the follow who was more than a little overweight. He told the doctor he was exercising daily,
but the doctor refused to believe it. So, the the
fellow listed all the the exercises he did every day: jump to conclusions,
climb the walls, drag my heels, push my luck, make mountains out of molehills,
bend over backward, run around in circles, put my foot in my mouth, go over the
edge, and beat around the bush (Readers Digest Online).

HE ASKED HIM…

A short time ago, I made a visit to the doctor myself. It was not a routine visit. I had an unexplained elevation in blood
pressure along with dizziness which caused me to feel like I was going to pass
out while pulling weeds from my garden.

So, when the nurse and physician came in, they started bombarding
me with all kinds of questions: “Why did
you come in?” “What symptoms did you
have?” “Are they still going on?” “Has this ever happened before?” “Did you eat anything different?” Questions, Questions! They were full of many questions. It made me remember what one of my
doctor-skeptical relatives once said, when the doctor asked him, “What’s going
on with you?” He answered very smartly,
“I don’t know, you tell me. That’s what I came to ask you.

For those who are a little smarter than my smarty-pants relative, we
all know that asking questions is an essential part of making a proper
diagnosis. Doctors are not gods, and
even more so, we rightly describe them as ‘practicing medicine’ because even
medical science is not an exact science.
Illness and good health depend on many different factors, and even
though there are some general rules to disease and wellness, every ‘case’ is
different because people and their bodies are different.

In the healing arts, and it is as much arts as it is science,
there is just no such thing as ‘one size’ or ‘one case’ exactly ‘fits
all’. This is why there are so many
warnings on medicine labels. It's also
why after you see or hear a new medicine being advertised on TV, right after you
hear about everything this new drug might do for you, they also have to warn
you what it might do to you. This is
also why you have to fill out so much personal and medical history when you
visit a new doctor. To help you, they
not only need to know about what’s wrong with you, they also need to have some
way of getting to know who you are.

What we know about Jesus, is that he was not only a “master
teacher”, but he also conducted a healing ministry and is called ‘a great
physician’. And like any other
physician, and even more so, Jesus most always approached the afflicted person
with questions---different questions.
When Jesus approached the mentally ill man, possessed with demons, his
first question was “What is Your Name?”
On another occasion, Jesus asked a blind man, after he removed his bandages and applied a ointment
of spittle and mud, “What do you see?” When
another Blind man cried out for Jesus to ‘stop and have mercy on him’, Jesus ironically asked, “What do you want me to
do for you?” Just like those doctors to
have to ask many questions in order to get a proper diagnosis, Jesus asked them
too.

Think again about that demon possessed man who was living in the
graveyard and continually cutting himself.
The very first question Jesus
asked him was: “What is Your Name?” How
many of us have entered the emergency room and had to answer too many questions
and fill out all those forms before a doctor would see us? It’s frustrating at times, but in most cases it’s
very necessary. It was also necessary
for Jesus to ask this mentally and spiritually confused person about his identity. How that man answered, “My name is Legion,
because we are many”, told Jesus and us as much about his spiritual condition,
as it did his physical one. Any good
doctor will remind you, that a good treatment that promotes healing always
starts with asking the right questions, and also not rushing to quick answers.

During my seminary training, I worked as a Chaplin in a major teaching
hospital. This short three months gave
me a much broader pastoral experience than I could have ever gained in
church-based ministry. Sometimes I even
got to rub shoulders with some very talented and busy physicians, some who were
glad I was working with their patients, others who didn’t care, and still
others who were willing to learn. In one
situation, I was called by a doctor who told me he had unanswered questions
about why one of his patients would not respond to normal medical
treatment. It should have been routine
to watch this man begin to get well from the medicines and therapy, but he
didn’t.

After reading the charts with nurses reports, the wise physician,
who knew nothing about spiritual matters, noticed that this fellow appeared
depressed without any clinical reason.
Remembering that he was trained to ask for chaplains, as a frontline
approach to signs of emotional or relational stress, he called me to ask if I’d
make a visit. I did, and I didn’t just
make one, but many visits and found this man to be depressed, not for physical
reasons, but for spiritual reasons, which we were able to talk and pray through
quite extensively. As several weeks went
by, the doctor noticed that his patient’s physical condition started to respond
to treatment and condition improved. One
day, when he saw me passing in the hallway, he stopped me and reported the
favorable result, even though he couldn’t explain why or how? His willingness to ask questions, beyond his
own knowledge was as important to the healing, as my own training was to learn
how to ask spiritual questions, without giving or suggesting easy answers.

PICK UP YOUR MAT AND WALK

This question Jesus asked in our text for today, “Do you want to
get well,” sounds very strange. But when
you consider the answer the paralyzed man gave him, it makes a lot more sense.

Jesus had just found this
man lying near a unique pool of water where all kinds of ‘disabled’ people were
always gathered around. Especially on
this special occasion, many crippled and
diseased people were seen waiting around the pool, until ‘the water is stirred’. The stirring waters, perhaps had very natural
causes, but were believed to have been moved by angels, or some other positive,
spiritual forces. For them, at least this was a therapeutic whirlpool with healing
properties.

What was most revealing about this crippled man’s response, was
exactly why Jesus asked him such a strange-sounding-question. The man, no doubt, had someone to bring him
to the pool called “Bethesda”where many other blind, lame, and paralyzed were
already gathered. But the man answers
Jesus’ question, not with an affirmative answer, but with an excuse. He answers that ‘when the water is stirred’
he has ‘no one to help him.’ This must
mean that he has no one to help him quickly get into the pool before the
movement stops. He can get to the pool,
but he couldn’t get into the water.

I
once had a aunt that I loved dearly. She
had never been married. My grandmother,
her mother died when I was two years old.
Her father, my grandfather, died when I was six. Because my aunt still lived on the farm, my
parents would visit every other Sunday during my childhood. One Sunday we would visit my still living
grandmother, my Father’s mother in North Iredell. The other Sunday, we would visit my aunt, my
mother’s older sister who lived a few miles west of Statesville.

I
loved how rustically, and independently my aunt lived. She didn’t have a bathroom. She didn’t have running water, except in the
kitchen. She also didn’t have central
heating; only a wood stove extending from the fireplace in the living
area. In the wintertime, I loved
fetching wood from the woodshed. I also
loved feeding the chickens and slopping the hogs, as well as pulling fresh
cherries from cherry trees, picking apples or pears in season. It was one of my favorite places to be.

I
loved it so much, that once, as a child, I decided I wanted to spend the night
with my aunt. I almost made, until she
started telling me how bad she felt, how her back or head was hurting her. I’m sure she made have had some real health
problems from time to time. But the real
issue was that she was lonely. She
liked to complain a lot. I noticed it,
even as a kid. When she started into a
‘fit of complaining’, as mom called, I couldn’t take it anymore and I had my
aunt call my parents to come and get me.

Again, I’m sure my aunt had some real health problems from time to
time, as we all do. But it seemed that
every time the doctors helped her, she quickly developed something else to
complain about. She even once ordered a
prayer cloth from healing evangelists Oral Roberts. When I suggested, with tongue in cheek to my
aunt that it must not worked, my mother stepped on my toe, which signaled me to
keep my big mouth shut. Did my aunt
really want to get well? It seemed to
me, that at least sometimes, she didn’t.
She really wanted to keep reminding us how lonely she was.

Perhaps the reason Jesus opened with the question: “Do you want to
get well” is because, for this fellow, as for us too at times, the sickness can
seem easier than the cure. Sometimes its
easier to give up. Sometimes the
treatment is overwhelming. Sometimes we
get so wrapped up in blaming somebody else, we forget how to take
responsibility for ourselves and our own actions. Coach John Wooden used to tell his UCLA
basketball players, on their way to become men, not just athletes: “Nobody is
really defeated until they start blaming somebody else.” So, he said,
“Try to fix the problem, don’t lay the blame.” Losers can blame, winners never do. I can’t ever remember a winning team saying,
“Well, it’s their fault that we won!”

This man is not helping his situation by laying blame, but as the
story unfolds, I love how Jesus didn’t say a single thing negative to this man
up front. What he does offer him is healing
without any up-front requirements at all.
Without another word, Jesus turns to him and commands: “Get Up!
Pick up your mat and walk!” This
is one of the stronger, double commands, Jesus ever gives, and he gives it to a
crippled man. It is not a command to
insult him, but it is a command to challenge the limits that has gotten into his
mind and heart, as well as, to challenge his physical situation. In directly, Jesus is saying: Stop blaming
anyone and ‘get up’ and you can walk!

One of my smart school mates, Robert Setzer Jr., comments in his
own sermon on this text, that ‘the measure of Jesus’ greatness is that sometimes
(I’d say often), he bets on a loser.’ He
continues, (I’m paraphrasing) that many of us, he and me included, would still
be lying beside our own pools of desperation, paralyzed with blame, fear or self-defeat,
drained of all our spiritual strength and emotional resources, had not Jesus’
love and challenging words of grace not come to us. Many you’ve been there, like I have and most
have, when unexpected sickness comes, with depressing diagnosis comes, when you
lost your job, when you lost a loved one, or when others let you down. It’s easy to get lock into to laying
blame---even blaming yourself. But Jesus
will not let you lay there for long. He
says to me, like he said to this cripple, and he says to any of us when life
cripples leaves us paralyzed with hurt: “Get Up!” Stop blaming them! Stop blaming yourself! Stop blaming me! Just get up and you will be on the way to
healing and hope. (Based on Encounters with the Living Christ, Robert B. Setzer
Jr., Judson Press, 1999, pp 58-59).

If you are the one lying around, blaming yourself or others for
your problems and your pains, would you let Jesus challenge you today? Would you let him challenge you with a friend
to walk beside you, with a church family who not only talked about grace, but
makes it happen. Would you let Jesus
challenge you with a word from Scripture that could leap off the page and find
a lodging place in your heart? Would
you hold your head up just long enough to look into his eyes or reach out, and
feel the touch of grace in his hand?

An old legend tells of hiker who lost his way and fell into some
quicksand. Confucius found the man in
this predicament and offered him a word of wisdom: “If I were you I’d stay away
from places like this? Buddha also saw
his plight and said, “Let the plight of this one be a lesson that you should
not repeat such folly!” Mohammad came by
speaking with great resolve: “Alas, this must be the will of Allah for an
infidel.” But then, finally Jesus came
up to the man, reach down his hand, saying “Brother, take me by the hand and I
will pull you out.”

Isn’t this the gospel?
Isn’t this the good news of Jesus Christ, that not only does not leave
us in our dying or hurting place, but offers us a way to live and to heal. And this is we know we need a savior, and we
know that we can’t save ourselves, when life has fallen in around us, and
there’s no one left to blame, and in no way will Jesus leave us there, but
offers us a way, when there is no way, and someone, when there is no one.

Just like Jesus skipped the big party in Jerusalem and went around
to the places of hurt and pain to find someone to save, Jesus can find us too,
no matter where we are lying, and no matter how all alone we might feel.

STOP SINNING OR SOMETHING
WORSE…

Still, just like the ‘stirring waters’ can’t really heal except
perhaps psychologically, or as auto-suggestion, the grace of God in Jesus
Christ is no magic nor miracle cure either, unless it has our own active
participation. This is why Jesus later locates the once crippled man in the
temple and reminds him: You’d better ‘stop sinning or something worse may
happen to you” (v.14).

Does it sound like ‘your Jesus’ or ‘my Jesus’ or ‘the real Jesus’ to
show up at church, after you and I have been saved, healed, or made whole, and then
to find us, look us straight in the eyes and directly say in no uncertain terms:
“You’d better stop sinning, or something worse, worse than even being paralyzed
or being lost, might happen to you.” Do
you think Jesus is threatening this fellow?
Do you think Jesus would be threatening us? Or could this be a sober, realistic, friendly
reminder that, as Bonhoeffer once said, “Grace is free, but it’s not cheap!”

Do you see why Jesus said this to the man. Ever since he was healed, he still hasn’t
gotten out of the old pattern of placing blame.
When religious leaders started asking him why he is carrying his mat on
the Sabbath, instead of describing how he was healed, he blames ‘the man who
made him well’ for commanding him ‘to take up his mat and to walk’ (v.11). But when question further, he did not know
who ‘this man’ was because Jesus had quickly ‘slipped away into the
crowd’. But when the man came into the
temple, perhaps to give thanks, Jesus sees him, and challenges him ‘to stop
sinning’ or ‘something worse could happen’. Right after than, falling into his
habit again, the man went to the religious leaders who wanted to kill Jesus and
squealed on him saying, ‘it was Jesus who made him well’ (v.15).

What happened to his man after this? We can only assume, as my school mate Bob
Setzer writes, “This is one man whom even Jesus couldn’t cure.” Yes, you heard right. Like the Rich Young Ruler who went away
sorrowful. Like the Rich man in Jesus’
parable who went to the Hell of unending torment. And even like Judas, whom John later will say
‘was a devil’ for betraying Jesus, and died only to ‘go to his own place’, here
is one of the few people Jesus healed, but didn’t cure. Perhaps it was the same for those nine
lepers, who didn’t return to thank Jesus too.
We don’t know. But what we do
know is that Jesus not only didn’t cure everybody, he couldn’t cure everybody,
because some did not want to be cured.
They wanted to stay the way they were, or to go back to the same old
unhealthy patterns and irresistible habits.
The wanted their own way, or it was the highway, as we say. What they didn’t get, was the endurance of
the saints, who are those will are not only saved by grace, but have been changed
and transformed by that grace, and will be saved, because they will endure to
the end.

So, hearing Jesus’ warning of grace, can you really understand his question? Do you really want to get well? Or is this just the same, o same o?

I conclude with a story, I also owe to Dr. Setzer, about a great
surgeon, who was about to perform plastic surgeon on a young boy who had lost
his arm in an accident. When the
surgeon came in to question the young man, he looked at him, and asked, “Now,
would you tell me about your handicap?” The young fellow look the famous doctor
with a look of surprise, and then with fire in his eyes answered, “Sir, I don’t
have a handicap. I just don’t have a
right hand.”

Now, that’s the kind of healing that is more than skin deep. It points us straight to the deeper,
spiritual, and more personal kind of healing, that Jesus came to give. Do you want this kind of healing? Do you really want to get well? You can, but you must ‘get up’ and ‘you must
walk’ it, and not just ‘talk it’. Amen.

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About Me

With over 30 years of pastoral experience, I've been the pastor of churches in both North Carolina and Germany, where my wife and I served as Missionaries in the 1990's. I'm currently serving as the pastor of two small, rural churches in western Yadkin and northern Iredell counties. I'll be celebrating 30 years of marriage to Teresa in 2010 and we have one married daughter.